Prior
to the the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment
-- namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder
and chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically
independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major campaign
issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge
sums of money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to
NAFTA.

At
the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a billionaire,
was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were pushing
NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in
one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their
true enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or
not, but it did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod
for the whole issue of free trade.

Perot
hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised
campaign speeches:

"If
you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you
can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour
for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for
a long time and you've got a mature workforce - pay a dollar an
hour for your labor, have no health care - that's the most expensive
single element in making a car - have no environmental controls,
no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you didn't care about
anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound
going south..."[1]
[emphasis added]

Perot's
message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was unfortunately
cut short when he entered into public campaign debates with fellow
candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much
on the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills.
As organized as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally
seasoned politician like Al Gore.

The
Spin Machine gears up

To
counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were
pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite,
the President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine
the country had ever seen.

Former
Chrysler chairman Lee Iococca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar
nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra,
carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better
Jobs. Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises.

Bill
Clinton invited three former presidents to the White House to stand
with him in praise and affirmation NAFTA. This was the first time
in U.S. history that four presidents had ever appeared together. Of
the four, three were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton,
Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner,
but was nevertheless a confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession
to the presidency in 1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller
(David Rockefeller's oldest brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that
Ford had just vacated.

The
academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine
publisher John MacArthur,

...there
was a pro-NAFTA petition, organized and written my MIT's Rudiger
Dornbusch, addressed to President Clinton and signed by all twelve
living Nobel laureates in economics, and exercise in academic logrolling
that was expertly converted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR
gold on the front page of The New York Times on September 14. 'Dear
Mr. President,' wrote the 283 signatories..."[2]

Lastly,
prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press
to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry
Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:

"[NAFTA]
would be the most constructive measure the United States would have
undertaken in our hemisphere in this century."[3]

Two
months later, Kissinger went further,

"It
will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken
by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the
first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for
the entire Western Hemisphere." [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade
agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."[4]
[emphasis added]

It
is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar
to the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a New International
Economic Order.

On
January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the
house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats
voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38.

That
Giant Sucking Sound Going South

To
understand the potential impact of the North American Union, one must
understand the impact of NAFTA.

NAFTA
promised greater exports, better jobs and better wages. Since 1994,
just the opposite has occurred. The U.S. trade deficit soared and
now approaches $1 trillion dollars per year; the U.S. has lost some
1.5 million jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen
significantly.

Patrick
Buchanan offered a simple example of NAFTA's deleterious effect on
the U.S. economy:

"When
NAFTA passed in 1993, we imported some 225,000 cars and trucks from
Mexico, but exported about 500,000 vehicles to the world. In 2005,
our exports to the world were still a shade under 500,000 vehicles,
but our auto and truck imports from Mexico had tripled to 700,000
vehicles.

"As
McMillion writes, Mexico now exports more cars and trucks to the United
States than the United States exports to the whole world. A fine end,
is it not, to the United States as "Auto Capital of the World"?

"What
happened? Post-NAFTA, the Big Three just picked up a huge slice of our
auto industry and moved it, and the jobs, to Mexico."[5]

Of
course, this only represents the auto industry, but the same effect
has been seen in many other industries as well. Buchanan correctly
noted that NAFTA was never just a trade deal: Rather, it was an "enabling
act - to enable U.S. corporations to dump their American workers and
move their factories to Mexico." Indeed, this is the very spirit of
all outsourcing of U.S. jobs and manufacturing facilities to overseas
locations.

Respected
economist Alan Tonelson, author of The Race to the Bottom, notes the
smoke and mirrors that cloud what has really happened with exports:

"Most
U.S. exports to Mexico before, during and since the (1994) peso
crisis have been producer goods - in particular, parts and components
sent by U.S. multinationals to their Mexican factories for assembly
or for further processing. The vast majority of these, moreover,
are reexported, and most get shipped right back to the United States
for final sale. In fact, by most estimates, the United States buys
80 to 90 percent of all of Mexico's exports."[6]

Tonelson
concludes that "the vast majority of American workers has experienced
declining living standards, not just a handful of losers."

"Much
praise has been heard for the few 'winners' that NAFTA has created,
but little mention is made of the fact that the Mexican people are
the deal's big 'losers.' Mexicans now face greater unemployment,
poverty, and inequality than before the agreement began in 1994."[7]

In
short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the citizenry of the United
States or Mexico. Still, this is the backdrop against which the North
American Union is being acted out. The globalization players and their
promises have remained pretty much the same, both just as disingenuous
as ever.

Prelude
to the North American Union

Soon
after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Dr. Robert A. Pastor began to push
for a "deep integration" which NAFTA could not provide by itself.
His dream was summed up in his book, Toward a North American Union,
published in 2001. Unfortunately for Pastor, the book was released
just a few days prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and
thus received little attention from any sector.

However,
Pastor had the right connections. He was invited to appear before
the plenary session (held in Ontario, Canada) of the Trilateral Commission
on November 1-2, 2002, to deliver a paper drawing directly on his
book. His paper, "A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission",
made several recommendations:

"...
the three governments should establish a North American Commission
(NAC) to define an agenda for Summit meetings by the three leaders
and to monitor the implementation of the decisions and plans.

"A
second institution should emerge from combining two bilateral
legislative groups into a North American Parliamentary Group.

"The
third institution should be a Permanent Court on Trade and Investment

"The
three leaders should establish a North American Development Fund,
whose priority would be to connect the U.S.-Mexican border region
to central and southern Mexico.

The
North American Commission should develop an integrated continental
plan for transportation and infrastructure.

"...negotiate
a Customs Union and a Common External Tariff

"Our
three governments should sponsor Centers for North American Studies
in each of our countries to help the people of all three understand
the problems and the potential of North America and begin to
think of themselves as North Americans"[8]
[emphasis added]

Pastor's
choice of the words "Modest Proposal" are almost comical considering
that he intends to reorganize the entire north American continent.

Nevertheless,
the Trilateral Commission bought Pastor's proposals hook, line and
sinker. Subsequently, it was Pastor who emerged as the U.S. vice-chairman
of the CFR task force that was announced on October 15, 2004:

"The
Council has launched an independent task force on the future of
North America to examine regional integration since the implementation
of the North American Free Trade Agreement ten years ago... The
task force will review five spheres of policy in which greater cooperation
may be needed. They are: deepening economic integration; reducing
the development gap; harmonizing regulatory policy; enhancing security;
and devising better institutions to manage conflicts that inevitably
arise from integration and exploit opportunities for collaboration."[9]

Independent
task force, indeed! A total of twenty-three members were chosen from
the three countries. Each country was represented by a member of the
Trilateral Commission: Carla A. Hills (U.S.), Luis Robio (Mexico)
and Wendy K. Dobson (Canada). Robert Pastor served as the U.S. vice-chairman.

This
CFR task force was unique in that it focused on economic and political
policies for all three countries, not just the U.S. The Task Force
stated purpose was to

"...
identify inadequacies in the current arrangements and suggest opportunities
for deeper cooperation on areas of common interest. Unlike other
Council-sponsored task forces, which focus primarily on U.S. policy,
this initiative includes participants from Canada and Mexico, as
well as the United States, and will make policy recommendations
for all three countries."[10]
[Emphasis added]

Richard
Haass, chairman of the CFR and long-time member of the Trilateral
Commission, pointedly made the link between NAFTA and integration
of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.:

"Ten
years after NAFTA, it is obvious that the security and economic
futures of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are intimately
bound. But there is precious little thinking available as to where
the three countries need to be in another ten years and how to get
there. I am excited about the potential of this task force to help
fill this void,"[11]

Haass'
statement "there is precious little thinking available" underscores
a repeatedly used elitist technique. That is, first decide what you
want to do, and secondly, assign a flock of academics to justify your
intended actions. (This is the crux of academic funding by NGO's such
as Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.)
After the justification process is complete, the same elites that
suggested it in the first place allow themselves to be drawn in as
if they had no other logical choice but to play along with the "sound
thinking" of the experts.

The
task force met three times, once in each country. When the process
was completed, it issued its results in May, 2005, in a paper titled
"Building a North American Community" and subtitled "Report of the
Independent Task Force on the Future of North America." Even the sub-title
suggests that the "future of north America" is a fait accompli decided
behind closed doors. For
part three click below.

Patrick M. Wood
is editor of The August Review,
which builds on his original research with the late Dr. Antony C. Sutton,
who was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Peace
and Revolution at Stanford University. Their 1977-1982 newsletter, Trilateral
Observer, was the original authoritative critique on the New International
Economic Order spearheaded by members of the Trilateral Commission.

Their highly regarded
two-volume book, Trilaterals Over Washington, became a standard reference
on global elitism. Wood's ongoing work is to build a knowledge center
that provides a comprehensive and scholarly source of information on globalism
in all its related forms: political, economic and religious.

Former
Chrysler chairman Lee Iococca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar
nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra,
carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better
Jobs. Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises.